I am big into stories which allow customizing names. Adding that bit of personalization for me adds a big punch into the story reading. I am planning to start one with a huge list and am open to add more if any author would like. Just wanted to get thoughts from other before I start on this crazy adventure. PS: As of now I have the Intro. to Characters done with the tally reaching around 10-15 primary characters and 10-15 in supporting roles.
Why? Please correct me if I'm wrong but you're talking using game mode to let the reader pick their name. Wouldn't it be much less work to use the built in customization function. I guess you could do nicknames this way, but its a lot easier to write {first_name} than 10-15 nested if functions. You should also be aware while game mode is very handy it does have a cost. Readers that want to check out a different branch have to either start over or go to the previous chapter one capter at a time. This can be time consuming and turns of some readers.
Oh, I think you misunderstood, I do plan to use the site's built-in customization function and not use functions. I was just wondering if readers would like to set up names for 25-30 characters as well as if other authors had any interest. Most seem to discourage that such a big project is doomed to fail but I am quite determined to make this epic
Sorry. I absolutely did and am still a little confused. Are you talking about adding side characters that other authors suggested? On a side note, talking about the kind of story (kinks, plot, goals) you will be writing may get more people interested. Even then you might not get help until you are well on your way. Unfortuntely, there are a lot of really great stories out there that are written soley by the owner.
Personally, I think it takes away from the integrity of the character, to allow customization. No story is going to fool me into thinking I'm reading about myself and my best friend and some girl I know. I say let a character have their own personality, and identity. Now - one might say "what's the harm? Pick a name, *and* allow customization!" But... what about teasing rhymes? Alliterations? Goofy tributes to other media? Misspeaks and misidentifications based on names? Fake names? Nicknames, based on the speaker? Where does the customization stop? Which side characters get it? Which locations? How should the user know where to slot in a preferred name before they read the story and get to know the character? Instead of freedom, and choice, as an author that customization option may create limits, and boundaries. Which translates, by result of creativity and consequence, to the reader's experience as well. There *are* stories where customization won't hurt, or will provide a unique grab, but overall for most semi-serious+ stories or characters, I say names are an important part of a character's identity - allow them to have that, if you respect them.
Well yes, and to answer both you and Loeman the story Intro would be similar to The Afterparty https://chyoa.com/chapter/Introduction.174046 but instead of being limited to just one night (the night of the Afterparty) expand and span 4 years. Ofcourse, I agree that no story can make one feel with customization that this is their story (most male MC's have a foot long dong, lol) but we are talking about a fantasy realm with a touch of realism. So it's more on lines of If I went to college with so and so people I know it might have turned out in such and such way... (even when someone might have never attended college). Also, with so many characters planned I was thinking of keeping it as 3rd person POV (Both) and the story would be able to develop (wishful thinking) better if different author might be able to relate or create branches based on their choice of lead character. I partially agree with your statement that yes it may limit but my response would be that there are millions of stories already over here, Lit. and so many other places but if I was to read stories with a bit of customization more than the regular then there are very few. I don't want to get too deep into customization either like defining their hair color, etc. with variables for all my proposed characters. Your point of "How should the user know where to slot in a preferred name before they read the story and get to know the character?" is spot on which I myself have faced with the stories that are here. The way I plan to address this is giving the reader a little insight into the characters on their bio page. The other thing I plan to do is the story starts with branching into 2 sections: 1.) Relive the Past 2.) Live the Present 1.) Will allow filling up the plot holes that are hinted in the Bio page and 2.) Will allow developing the story based on the Past happenings.. (that's kinda the idea). As example:
How many of "youngest national champions" exist? And even if I'd ignore the "national champion," I couldn't name anyone I know. Makes it even more difficult, especially combined with the former part. And in my opinion, it would be much better if you would actually TELL these rumors in the story. No luck here as well. (and I won't even mention the rest of his bio) Um, well... no And how high are the odds that this girl would be into the person who would be the namegiver for Scott? Sure... Not much personality described on this one. (Though the rest doesn't sound like an everyday story) So I wouldn't be able to give any of these four characters a meaningful name. That sounds conflicting. (btw not everyone is familiar with the imperial system) So have yours? ^^ For reading? A brief no. Remember that other authors have to use the variables as well. That means additional work and higher concentration on a "rather unimportant" thing. Some authors might not even realize that they have to use name variables and use the standard names or even use the names they used while reading. And it's really annoying if you read a paragraph and think, "What? James? Who the hell is James?" or "Amanda would have never done that! She was described as the tiny, shy girl!" I think two named characters are enough. In some cases, four or five might work as well but everything above is just additional work without any merit. In my story, I use a variable for the MC and one for his wife. The MC is present at all times while the wife is present about half of the time. If a character only appears in every tenth chapter, it doesn't add much if they have a special name. Rather allow the reader to choose nicknames as additional immersion variables for the main characters or names they could use during sex (like "Sex God" or "Daddy") though with the downsides Loeman already stated. I think so as well. It's similar to the stories which start with 2 options of which each least to 2 options and so on. Just calculate how many chapters you have to write. You said, "The Afterparty" only depicts one night but by now it already has 700 chapters. Now let's say there are notable events every month... so that would be around 50 of them for your story... that's 35,000 chapters. I don't know how many characters "The Afterparty" has, but I think from skimming it there were about 8 (honestly, I have no idea )... so if you have 25 characters, that would be times 3, so around 100,000 chapters. Now... more characters mean more interaction between them, which multiplies the actual number of chapters. Each character could have about 3 times more interaction (8 to 25) which results in 300,000 chapters. Now if we assume that every chapter is about 500 words, this results in 150 million words. I think the biggest novel series doesn't even count 5 million words... so that would be even epic-epic in comparison to epic novels.
Thanks for the inputs, though all the ones regarding the Bio didn't make much sense to me at all and the tone was rather discouraging. He went on to become the youngest national champion.. does mean the "youngest national champion" currently - I couldn't understand what was so confusing. The Bio as I did write will have their story fleshed out in section 1.) Relive the Past (the Bio page would get updated too if a different Author made contributions that would reflect well in the short Bio) and keep it exciting. Lol, I have no hope to have this story fit someone's life that perfectly. I don't think this was needed but I can add a disclaimer if you like "This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental." You don't need to, that's kinda the idea, the Bio also says that. The idea being the MC does things well where he puts his mind to it, otherwise he's an average Joe. By the way, the Bio has a bit of rumors along with facts intentionally incorporated. My qualm with these types of story is that you allow personalization but then are thrown in a crowd of unknown's and that's where the personalization ends as the MC starts interacting with characters that have names you've never even heard of. Again this is my opinion and how I see the "idea of a customized story". I guess it might also depend on one's social circle when one want's to fill in the names. I mean having a bitchy girl who is always scheming and has 3 minion followers is quite a general description and probably would fit for a lot of readers.
The point of using immersion variables is to give the reader familiarity which reminds them of their own environment. And as the "youngest national champion" means that there is exactly one makes the character so special that not many readers could find similarities with people they know. So don't get me wrong, having characters with a special background is fine — even though yours might be slightly over the top for my taste — but they aren't average Joes which everyone has in their circle of friends and acquaintances. A story usually starts with something new or some change. Like moving to a new town, meeting new people, going to college, breaking up, experiencing something completely new, and so on. (Though some of them might work better with a bit of back flash) So if you allow the reader to get into that main character, there will always be new people. Otherwise, they wouldn't read a story but their own biography. And naming unknown characters with known names don't add anything to the immersion. I'd rather think it makes it weird to read about characters with known names who are all but similar to their name giver. So one out of 25? Or is your plan to offer the reader to pick his main character for themselves? In that case, it wouldn't make much sense anyway as they would only appear every few chapters. Then I'd rather offer one male and one female name for the main characters and let them see the story with their eyes. (focus on them if 3rd person is used) And I don't want to discourage you but it isn't easy to handle these variables, especially if you work with other authors. I mean, I use short version variables {m}, {f} and {s} which are fast to type and easy to remember but if you have 25 of them, you have to be really focused on that part of your writing. So if there is only one wrong name in a chapter, it can throw the reader out of his immersion, wondering if they forgot some details of a character or wondering how it would be possible that this character is present right now or kissing the girl of another guy.
I don't think adding one obscure quality would alienate the reader but I'll keep your input and see how best to address this. In general my plan is to actually have these total of around 15 MC's and the reader might actually be able to fit well with one of them and not the traditional way that the first character would be your best bet. As I said in my first post the narrative it to be 3rd person (Both) which would allow for that. Here are some of the other Bio's that a user might be able to relate better. I am kinda new here so I might be wrong but I felt this choice of characters might also encourage some other authors who might associate better with some other character and be interested in writing for them. I don't plan on publishing this right away, I plan to have some story arc to develop before I get to that point but I felt starting to discuss here would help in that process to refine certain things, so honestly any feedback in appreciated. If it accompanies suggestions how to address those issues it helps more PS: I don't know how others do but when writing a story you can use real names and then swap them later with the variable names quite easily using something like Notepad++. I see a lot of writers mix names even when writing stories with 3-4 character variables or incorrectly formatted variables.
Mh... I'm not sure if using so many characters is a good idea at all. Who can remember that many names and backgrounds? And will it be intimate? Well, maybe someone else has experience with that and can tell something about it. The thing is that you have to write 15 stories in one while I'd recommend writing only one story. I mean, if readers fall in love with a secondary character, you can always do a spin-off. Yes, that helps. While the height is fine for a biography, I wouldn't state bra size at all. Especially as it doesn't say much about the size or the look of it. There is again the issue of metric/imperial measurements. Additionally, there are different bra size systems which kind of use the same letters with different meanings.
I do like, er no.. absolutely love long stories with a ton of characters. Something on the lines of The Circle by SteveWallace https://www.literotica.com/s/the-circle-ch-01-2 and his other works. And that's where this deep desire to do something big comes into play. Not to mention to construct a build up to pull off an epic orgy scene one needs a ton of characters. There are also other scenarios where having these many characters is warranted. I have started publishing to stories that already exist here and keep my goals for those modest while I work on this dream project silently and stealthily Thanks, that's useful info.
I had some time to think further on this and the idea with these multiple characters was akin to what we have in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The Re-live the Past section can be thought of as the origin stories of all these main characters. Some of them could be overlapping to make it more immersive. It also gives those writers who are interested in participating almost a free hand in developing the characters. Of course, if it's an origin story of a Thanos like character then it does need to follow those basic queues for everything to make sense at the end. I did publish a short arc (so far) of a GI Joe fanfic I had written 10 years back but never got to post it anywhere which does deal with quite a few characters. Of course with a fanfic one does not need to spend much time on character development since most readers have a good enough impression of them. I'm also going to start contributing to other stories that interest me and hope I can get a partnership going with a few. Another thought was maybe some writers might be interested in lending/incorporating characters from their story. I'm just brainstorming here so a lot of idea's I'm pitching might not fly.
I won't speak to the discussion going on with gene.sis because, frankly, I'm lazy, and that's a lot of words. hahah. That said, I will speak to the point of having large amounts of characters with names. For me, I avoid that like the plague. If you start naming everyone, I'm not going to remember who they are. Unless their name adds to the emotion of a scene, don't even say their name, and unless they are important to the story, don't say it more than a few times. But if they're a main character, I would use their name every chance you get until you're sure the reader's got it remembered, so long as it doesn't sound awkward. I think this is even more true for adult fiction. People have already disengaged their brains, to a certain degree. Keep it simple. This is a movie example, but I think it applies. There's a reason I can remember "Farmer Maggots crops!" from The Fellowship of the Rings even though it's only said once, and can't remember the name of anyone in The Hunger Games movies, except some of the main characters. "Farmer Maggot" evokes a powerful mental image combined with the sight of the scythe bobbing up and down behind the corn stalks. But I had to remind myself who Finnick was, and why I should care, even though he's supposed to be a main character. Besides, when you name everyone, and one of those people ends up being important, you have to go back and see which one of those "people who's name you never bothered to remember" they were.
I agree but I don't plan to rush into it, not taking the DCEU route but Marvel's. The characters are to be quite in focus and built over chapters. The Survivor fanfic project I have in mind is similar on those lines as a stepping stone where there are 20 characters and in a few episodes you generally have a grasp of their names and traits. Another way is if you look the The Afterparty story, the Introduction barely describes the characters but over time writers have added chapters that if you have read the arcs you can get a good idea about the characters. I think in a story if you can give each character 2-3 good scenes that also match their traits the reader will get a good enough grasp and then minor references in subplots is all it should take. That's a nice example and I'm definitely going to use some of the similar references to develop the characters.
I don’t care but add default names that aren’t “the girl’s name is Doe because I’m too lazy to fix something that can even be done later.” If you pick defaults and I can change them later, nice but if you make it all ridiculous work because I’m reading about you want to make out with Doe, I’m out of the story.
